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/co/ntainment/Snoop
Tatyana Petrovna gets a tour of /co/ntainment from Captain Rookie Tour :"What'd you say your name was again, kid?" Captain Rookie asked, eyeing the reporter out of the edge of one eye while waiting for the elevator to arrive. Around them the hustle and bustle of the public offices of Containment continued unabated. :"Tatyana Petrovna" the other woman said in her clear but accented voice. "But you can call me-" :"Snoop." Rookie snapped back quickly. :"Like the dog?" Tatyana replied, surprised. She had to quickly follow the young captain into the elevator, which had arrived and disgorged a number of Containment employees. Soon she and Rookie were riding down below the sun-lit upper floor into the underground. :"Like 'a pain in my ass that's out to dig up dirt to generate even more crap for me to deal with'. That kinda Snoop." :"Oh." :"Also, it's a tradition thing. Supposed to be bad luck to use your real name down there. Bunch o' hogwash, of course." Rookie shrugged as the elevator dinged into position on sub level one, the doors sliding open with a tired creak. :"Ah yes, I have heard that some employees have died just by-" the reporter began, stepping out of the elevator and surveying the virtual maze of corridors. :"You really need to not listen to rumors" Rookie said tersely. "You act smart, you live. You act stupid, you die. Problem we got here is that nobody knew the rules on what was smart and not at the start. Dealing with the unknown, yannow?" :"One can surmise that might be a problem, yes" Tatyana replied, studying each door as they walked past. About halfway down the corridor a balding, somewhat hunched man well past his prime appeared around a corner, holding a large pile of weird items piled unceremoniously in a box. When he spotted the Captain and her guest he smiled weakly and nodded. :"Rookie." he said, his voice carrying the weight of years. :"Sink. Going down to IT with the remains?" :"Yep. This is all the field techs could scrape up. Damn thing blew up right good didn't it?" :"That's how I like 'em." Rookie smiled a little, and the older man walked past them towards the elevator. "That's Sink. He's been here a very long time. A lot younger than he looks, poor sod." Tatyana nodded as she followed the Captain into a large, locker-filled area with doors leading into a large gymnasium, a shooting range and other training facilities. :"Is he your oldest employee? Chronologically, I mean?" :"Ah no no, not even close. We got some folks here that predate the organization itself. When they started Containment up there wasn't much to it but a single squad and the administrative section. You already saw the offices and such above ground. Every operation needs bean counters and paper-pushers." Tatyana looked around at the locker room. Many of the lockers were covered in heavy, arcane-looking graffiti. Some were covered in very heavy locks. Others were bouncing back and forth slightly, with weak moans emanating from inside. Other lockers were heavily pitted and charred. :"First group o' folks they got together were all civilian volunteers. First mistake right there. It was cheaper, and much cheaper if you forewent the suggested training regimen and just sent 'em through a six-week crash course in 'weird happenings'. Poor bastards." Rookie sighed heavily. "That was A-squad. Poor, poor sods. We're still using the alphabet thing today, but since we're on R-squad now, it's bound to change soon enough." :"And the training is... improved now?" Tatyana inquired, returning to the parts of the conversation that interested her the most. :Rookie shrugged. "Yeah. It is. We got better at everythin'. The cost was high, but... yeah. We know how to deal with most COMMON occurrences and phenomenons now. That's not to say they're not dangerous. Our recruitment process became better, as well. We don't just take poor saps who think this is a dream assignment cuz they believe in UFO's or ghosts anymore. Well, unlike a few stupid, naive people like me..." Tatyana was not exactly sure if the Captain was being facetious or brutally honest, and felt a return to an earlier thread of conversation was needed. :"Was the attrition really that bad, then? The organization is not even that old, is it?" Rookie stared at her silently for a few moments, her face impassive. :"...yeah. The early days were bad. Damn surprise funding wasn't cut at that point. I started out in J-Squad, few years back. A-Squad through I-Squad all happened within five years before that. Think about that for a few moments, Snoop." The silence became a bit uncomfortable, and Tatyana walked over to study one of the vibrating, noise-making lockers. She reached out to touch it with a finger when Rookie spoke again. :"Careful. There's a minor poltergeist inside o' there. It probably won't hurt ya, but it could take off with your underwear, or change your hair color." Tatyana quickly withdrew her finger before impacting on the metal. Rookie jumped back to her feet, walking past the lockers back towards the exit. :"Some o' these we have to keep like that cuz we can't find a way to safely dispose or exorcise them. Some are haunted by their former owners, some just infected by some random cursed object or escaped entity. Anyway, the armory is this way." They walked further down the corridor to a large, heavy metal door fitted not only with extensive mechanical locks but also with a complex pattern of mystical runes, forming a large swirling circle. Rookie placed her hand on a large plate, which began glowing a warm red. The door hissed and clicked and slid open, and they entered into the armory. There were a couple of armed guards inside, who both gave the Captain a quick salute as she entered. Ahead of them were long rows of racks containing firearms, shelves stuffed with obscure and arcane objects, clothing racks filled with body armor, weird backpacks and headgear, and behind the main area a large open area filled with large, clunky-looking mech suits. :"Now funding has improved, miraculously" Rookie began. "A-Squad went against ghosts with normal handguns and flak jackets. Today we have slightly better methods. No superhero stuff, though. Been tryin' to get that Doctor Castle gal assigned to us for some time, but the brass always put a stop to that for some reason. Don't tell Springtime I said that, by the way. Damn jealous." Rookie did a few paces around the shelves as well, showing off this or that item to Tatyana. :"Still, you're better off with a runic amulet than kevlar sometimes, and there's some faintly enchanted weapons for dealing with incorporeal beings that ain't gonna be hurt by bullets. And o'course when we have a rampaging monster o' some kind the riot mechs are there." Tatyana took this in as she tapped text into her pad, walking around and surveying the rows of shelves stacked with unguents in jars, weird rod-like devices topped with crackling spheres, large bulky mechanical backpacks, body armor inscribed with similar runes as the vault door and other things. It was all a weird hodge-podge of technology, superstition and just plain weird things, giving off a feel that it had been slowly accumulated like flotsam over the years. She leaned in to study a man-sized skeleton sitting slumped against a pile of large crates when the skeleton jerked upwards, causing her to stumble backwards with a scream. Rookie was there almost immediately, her handgun drawn. She helped Tatyana back to her feet, giving the skeleton an ugly stare. :"Sadsack, what the hell did I say about sleeping in here?" :"How many times do I have to tell you, it's-" the skeleton began in a weirdly ordinary human voice. :"King Spooky. No. It's not. You're Sadsack, and you're a damn slacker. If I catch you shirking duty in here again you'll be washing out the vault again." :"Sheesh, yeah yeah captain hardass." The skeleton mumbled, clanking to his feet, stretching and wandering back towards the vault door, muttering angrily all the way. :"And put some damn pants on!" Rookie shouted after him. Noticing Tatyana's puzzled look, she shrugged. "Used to be normal. They dunno why he's like that now. Didn't change him one bit, though, still lazy." Trying to regain her composure, Tatyana turned back to study the many and heterogeneous devices stored in the armory shelves. :"Are these things effective?" :"They work. Usually. You ever face down a dybbuk with only an auric resonance rod and a pack full of holy mantras, Snoop?" :"Not lately." :"Then take my word for it. Sometimes you fly by the seat of your pants, but we got our act together better than in the old days. I mean, funny enough the army and the cops keep riding our backs now, asking if we can share the few things we do have that works with 'em. And we don't even have enough for ourselves." :"What about the rumors that some of the equipment is little better than superstitious claptrap? That many lives have been lost due to malfunctioning devices or just failing to-" There was a brief moment when she thought Rookie would punch her, as a fire flickered behind her eyes. Then her shoulders slumped. Then the Containment officer gave her a resigned look, far beyond what Tatyana thought capable from the other woman. Rookie couldn't even be older than her, though there was a sense when Tatyana stared into her eyes that the Captain had been horribly aged prematurely. Not in body, as with poor Sink, but in soul. :"Never mind. I'm sure you do the best with what you have." :"Damn right" Rookie shrugged, and walked back towards the door. "Let's go down, shall we?" They didn't speak much as they headed back to the elevator, taking it down one more level to sub-level two, far below the streets. The Containment facilities did not seem to have too many employees, but due to the constantly cramped spaces the entire building appeared to be constantly bustling. As they walked down the hallway they passed several closed doorways, some bearing very odd signs. As Tatyana looked back to one they had just passed, a translucent white man floated through it. He was somewhat portly and dressed in a well-maintained safari outfit, complete with pith helmet and a monocle over one eye. The man floated across the corridor, then noticed the reporter and gave her a smile and a wave, showing off a face bordered with thick muttonchops. Rookie turned around just in time to see the man float down the hallway and vanish through another wall. :"That's lord Bartleby Danger. He's one of the employees here that's older than Containment is. Much older. He was a big game hunter back in the late 19th century who was recruited into one of many organizations that can be considered our predecessors." :"19th century? Really? How did he come to be here? This building cannot be more than fifty years old at most?" :"Yer right there. When Containment started up there was a large amount of transferring previously known hazardous supernatural material here. The suits in DC figured that if we're gonna hold on to all this weird gunk we may as well put it all in one place so they know ONLY that place will be dangerous... Great thinking." Tatyana nodded as they started down the corridor again. :"Course" Rookie continued as they walked past a nervous-looking man who stared after them with one eye twitching violently "there were also a few not-so-malicious items, like Bartleby's old haunted umbrella stand." :"Umbrella stand?" Tatyana blinked. :"Yep. Made from the foot of a yeti that must've been bigger than anything we've ever encountered. The lord picked it as his focus on the material plane. Must be proud of it. Anyway he likes hanging around here. Gives him a sense of purpose. Sees us all as his protégés. " They reached a large set of double doors from which a thick smell of sulfur and other, less describable odors escaped. Rookie forcefully pushed the doors open and Tatyana was instantly greeted by the sight of a young woman running around with a merry fire crackling on the back of her lab coat. As the Captain and journalist entered, another lab tech jumped at the woman and tackled her to the ground, dousing the fire with a hand extinguisher. They both gave Rookie a tired thumps-up as she walked past. :"The IT department is our R&D, scientific investigation, supernatural investigation and maintenance department, all rolled into one. It was founded some time before J-Squad, and was probably a good reason that fatalities began dropping off. Having a dedicated research staff at yer back is invaluable in the field." :"Indeed" said an unfamiliar, metallic-tinged voice. Tatyana turned around to confront a woman... at least the reporter was fairly sure it was a woman. She was dressed in a full-body suit of body armor, with a tattered, scorched lab coat slung over it. Her head was covered in a bizarre helmet, and a pair of large piston-like tanks stuck out from her back, containing some kind of swirling fluid. :"Heya Springtime" Rookie said, giving the masked woman a hearty slap on the shoulder. "Just showing Snoop here around the facilities for her little news scoop." :"Ah yes, the reporter" the masked woman said. Her voice had a heavy filtered metallic tinge as well as a faint sibilance. "I'm the director of IT. You can call me Springtime." :"Pleasure" Tatyana said, unfazed. "Why the armor?" :Springtime shrugged. "One can never be too careful. I have not survived this long in Containment by slipping up. Besides, there have been certain... incidents... which makes wearing this more... comfortable." Tatyana nodded, and the masked scientist seemed to regard her as if waiting for more questions. :"Do you feel you have a sufficient budget, miss... er... Springtime?" :"Doctor, actually. And no. of course not. If I had enough resources we wouldn't have a number of agents hospitalized, in asylums or under possessions. We wouldn't have a dangerously unstable containment facility downstairs. We wouldn't have to rely on substandard, archaic wards and contraptions." The scientist seemed to get rather agitated as she continued speaking, waving her arms around dramatically. "Do you have any idea what I could do with the right resources? Aura-coded trans-dimensional armor! Incorporeality-negating force fields! Jetpacks for everyone! Why I could-" :"That's enough doc." Rookie said, giving the gesturing scientist a glare. Springtime fell quiet, and nodded. :"...what I meant to say is that we always need budget, even if it has grown tenfold since I started here." :"Thank you doctor" Tatyana said. As she and Rookie turned to go, the reporter turned back. "Do I... know you from somewhere? Something about you appears... familiar." Springtime froze, studying Tatyana quietly, her expression unreadable beneath her helmet. :"I just have one of those faces, I guess?" The scientist tittered and turned around, sweeping back towards her understudies, who had managed to loosen some form of tiny, translucent globule on the lab in her absence. Rookie and Tatyana continued to tour the lab, studying various weird creatures suspended in man-sized tubes filled with gurgling fluids, orbs containing swirling multicolored mists, electric devices constantly discharging jolts into puddles of mauve goo and a million other things until Tatyana's head was spinning. :"Does it all lead to something? Or is the success rate low?" she inquired to her guide after their circuit of the cavernous lab area finished. :"Some of it does. Some of it I'm pretty sure Springtime just does for fun. She's a scientist first and foremost. They just gotta poke at things. Caused a few small disasters in themselves, but the benefit of IT outweighs those little hiccups." The pair headed out the doorway and back towards the elevator. They shared it this time with a few other Containment employees forcing Tatyana to stop writing on her pad. As the elevator screeched to a tired halt on the bottom floor, the journalist was happy to be free. The lighting down here was much worse than on both upper floors, with long shadows cast by the piled-up boxes and old furniture lining every corridor. There was also a faint electric charge in the air, making the hairs on the back of Tatyana's hand stand on end. :"Captain? Something I've been meaning to ask." :"Shoot, Snoop." :"You employ personnel who are... ahem... shall we say, legally passed on? Like your 'Sadsack' and that ghost we saw?" :"Yeah? What about it?" :"Is that legal?" :Rookie shrugged again. "They signed the forms. Far as we're aware, it is. They all stay here of their own free will, trust me. We actually have a whole squad made up of post-mortems... they call it G-Squad, or Ghost Squad. Composed of folks who died in the line of duty and refused to let go." :"Are they effective? One could imagine they would be immune to many forms of harm?" :"To a degree, but there's also plenty of things they can't do that a living person can. From what they tell me it's damn hard to even manifest enough to touch stuff. Being able to do so consistently enough to do missions... well. That's only fer the strongest wills and angriest bastards." This time, the two arrived at the heaviest and most complex-looking gateway so far. It resembled nothing as much as a huge metal portcullis, covered in technological devices, runes, gemstones and other items. On each side of the doorway, as well as above it, there were many signs with warnings in all sorts of languages, and a few non-verbal signs that Tatyana had never seen before, including a triangular yellow and red one showing the figure of a man being consumed by an enormous octopoid monster. Once again opening it, Rookie let Tatyana enter into a room in which the temperature was noticeably lower. :"This is the vault." Rookie said as Tatyana pulled her thin jacket closer around her. "In the beginning it was literally just the basement, but IT has tried to build up as stable of a storage area as they can. Most o' the heavily cursed stuff that we can't exorcise or destroy goes down here, as well as any entities we need to keep under wraps." Walking down the hallway, Tatyana saw smaller corridors branching off, some leading to small storage rooms, some to vaults with heavy doors, some to what looked like cells. They passed by a large room in the main corridor warded off by a large sheet of glass. Behind it Tatyana could see a room where a thin, utterly black man-shaped being huddled in the shadow behind a large cupboard. For a moment it turned its head towards the reporter, displaying a pair of bottomless, shining eyes and nothing more. Tatyana hurried after Rookie. :"Is it wise not to... ehm... destroy some of these... things?" she mumbled, feeling honestly spooked for the first time during the tour. :"We can't. Anything that's down here we have locked up because we can't figure out how to get rid of it, and there's no safer place. Mind you, nothin' we have here is too powerful. Except one thing." They passed by what seemed like a small open-air habitat, complete with painted sky and a sun lamp. Among the shrubs and large mushrooms, Tatyana saw several diminutive humanoids cavort and squeal unintelligibly. Next there was a large cylindrical object seemingly made from lead, with every inch covered in an arcane rune. The entire metallic structure hissed and susurrated faintly, and occasionally a faint bluish spark flicked from the surface. After that they passed a glass-covered vault, where a single black book sat on a tall podium. Even as Tatyana watched, the thick, leather-bound volume twitched and jumped against the heavy black chains holding it down to its plinth. :"Anyway, here we are. I suppose this is what you wanted to see?" They stopped in front of a heavy metal door, huge and circular in shape. Tatyana walked up and stretched to peer through the thin window set in it. Beyond was a dark chamber of some kind, with a t-shaped frame in the center. And on top of that frame was some kind of dark shape, small and hunched. Tatyana pulled herself up further to see... ...an intense blast of incandescent red energy struck the other side of the door from her face, making her yelp and topple over backwards. Looking up with her head spinning, she felt Rookie take her arm and hoist her back to her feet once again. To her relief, the door seemed to have held firm. Tatyana noticed a sign with a turnable digit counter next to the doorway. "0 days since last catastrophe". :"...I guess the rumors are true" :"That they are. You about ready to head home to write your story, Snoop?" :"I am, I believe" Tatyana said, brushing herself off as Rookie led her back towards the exit. "You have been... most hospitable, captain." :"Hogwash." Rookie shrugged as they reached the elevator. "We're not top secret, so we have to put up with any investigation they throw at us, as well as deal with the press. You seemed to have appealed to the brass, though. Something about fair treatment and all that. And out of all the people I had to show the place for, you were at least polite." :"Can you quit?" The question jumped from Tatyana's lips almost without passing by her brain. :"What?" :"If you wanted to... could you just walk away? Lead a normal life?" :"Yeah. I could. We're here by choice. " :"Then why don't you? This is obviously still a highly hazardous occupation. You deal with forces you barely understand, using equipment that may or may not work... There must be other things to do. Police, army, marines?" :"Everyone has their reason for staying, Snoop." Rookie said as the elevator emerged from the sub-levels onto the entrance hall floor. "I do it because I owe it to some friends. You run along now." Tatyana merely nodded, shook the Captain's hand, and emerged back into the warm, soothing sunlight. Category:Stories